Robson excludes Steelers on Saucerman’s Return To Sheffield

Mat Robson celebrated his second consecutive shutout in the Utilita Arena in Sheffield and stopped all 40 shots with which he was confronted when Coventry Blaze skated with a 2-0 win over the Steelers.

“I had every emotion that came in here tonight,” said Colton Saucerman, who was at the Steelers for the first time since it was at Coventry in the summer. “I wanted to win this game, but it feels strange to win against Sheffield here. It was emotional in the beginning, but as soon as the game started, I went in.”

A scoreless opening period was not without opportunities in Sheffield. Both parties came through penalty murders to keep the game scoreless, while Stephen Harper came closest to breaking the impasse in the last minute of the period, but saw his efforts coming back from the inside of Robson’s post.

“It was a difficult game, we thought we dominated the piece, but came across a hot keeper,” said Kyle Watson, who made his EIHL debut for the steels after growing up as a youth fan of the team. “My first game here was when I was about two weeks old, so it was long to make my debut for this team. But when the puck drops, you had to concentrate on the game. I tried to play strong and keep it simple, and I felt confident.”

Coventry created the better opportunities to start period two and rightly ran a little more than seven minutes ahead. A broken stick when the fire 2-on-1 broke, the puck put in the path of Archie Hazeldine, who roofed it in the upper corner of Matt Greenfield.

After seeing the Steelers starting the third period at the attack, the fire broke and doubled their lead when Jack Hopkins De Puck played over the fold for Kim Tallberg to go home along a helpless Greenfield 2:33 in the last frame.

Sheffield insisted on a goal, but just couldn’t find a way along Robson. On the other hand, the fire was only a deflection of scoring on the empty net, but held on to celebrate an excellent victory.

“It is a very difficult building to come and play, but it was a big and important game to keep us in the Cup classification,” concluded Saucerman. “We came in and just tried to play hard, and Robson stood on his head.”